Did Ripple Bribe Coinbase?

Did Ripple Bribe Coinbase?

The head of XRP markets at Ripple, Miguel Vias denied all allegations of paying off Coinbase to list the third largest cryptocurrency on their exchange.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few weeks, Ripple’s native token XRP has been listed on Coinbase Pro. Soon after it was listed, rumours surfaced that suggested Ripple had bought their way onto the platform as it quickly became clear that the XRP token was breaking one of the regulations that are required to get onto the exchange.

The response followed a series of bribery accusations which was aimed at Coinbase after its sudden announcement of adding XRP trading pairs to its platform on 26th February. On the other hand, Coinbase had earlier remained cautious of the said listing. Many have speculated Coinbase’s careful approach was down to the unusual history of XRP with Ripple Labs – this is down to the fact that Ripple holds around sixty percent of XRP which is worth billions of dollars.

Furthermore, the company was most likely concerned about a pending $167.7 million class-action lawsuit against Ripple which would most likely determine whether XRP is a security asset or not.

Controversy

Nevertheless, according to Alistair Milne all the genuine concerns about Coinbase came and went in almost an instant.

The CIO of Altana Digital Currency Fund reached Elliott Suthers, Coinbase’s communications director, through an email with a set of “interrogative questions”. Suthers was asked whether or not Coinbase was looking out for permission of either the Securities and Exchange Commission or Commodity and Futures Trading Commission before offering XRP to the public. Moreover, Milne was asked whether there was a secret deal between Coinbase and Ripple for listing XRP pairs.

Milne took to Twitter to share an email that Suthers had sent him on 26th February.